How to Clone a Website to Staging - Pressable (2024)

Pressable’s cloning and staging site functionality allows users to create a duplicate of a site on their account. Clones and WordPress staging environments are useful if you are looking to create a test/development environment or if you are looking to build a new site using an existing site as a starting point.

To begin, log in to the MyPressable Control Panel and select the site you wish to clone.

From the “Site Actions” menu, head to the “Clone Site” section.

This section can also be accessed by clicking on the “Clones” dropdown at the top left corner of the Site page. Here you can also see the list of clones that were created from that site. In the screenshot below, test-clone is a clone site that was created by cloning the current site.

In that section, enter the name of the cloned site you would like. For example, if you are making a development environment, you might add dev to the front of the name. If you are going to make a brand new website with the original as a starting point, give it an appropriate name for the new site.

Toggling the “Clone as Staging Site?” slider on will prevent the new site from counting towards your overall site limit and also prevent domains from being added to it until it is converted to a live site (more on that at the bottom of this article).

When you create a clone, you have the option to set it as “staging”. The amount of staging sites your account can have is equal to the number of regular sites available on your plan, up to a maximum of 20. For example, if you have a 10 site plan, you will also have 10 staging site spaces – these do not count towards your overall site limit.

Read more about the difference between live sites, staging sites, and clones.

Once you have clicked “Clone”, the cloning process will begin. You can check the status of the clone from your MyPressable Control Panel. The amount of time a site takes to clone will vary based on the size of the site and its files.

Staging Sites will be marked with a “staging” tag by their site name.

As soon as the clone process is finished, you will receive an email letting you know the process is finished and giving you information related to the new clone site. Please wait for this email before accessing your clone site.

You can also check the MyPressable Control Panel for information relating to the new clone site.

Cross-Site Restores provide the functionality to create a clone of a site using a backup rather than the current version (for example: take a backup from Site A and place it on Site B).

More information about Cross-Site Restores can be found here.

Staging Sites cannot have domains added to them by default. However, they can be converted to a live site by clicking the “Convert Site” button that can be found under the “Convert Site to Live” section within the “Site Actions” menu on the site page in your MyPressable Control Panel – this will then allow the site to have domains added. Converting the site to a live site will then make it count towards your overall site limit and remove it from your staging site limit.

If you are logged in as a Collaborator only the appropriate actions are visible to you based on the user permissions set for your account.

To read more about how to push your staging site into production, please click here.